Janet Malcolm

I'll tell

you why, because I've just finished rereading for the third time, Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer, because I was thinking I might teach it in my class next year.

And I just, there is a really big part of me that feels that corporate media has sullied itself so much that it is not possible for journalists who work for corporate media to continue to say, we're the noble ones, we shine the light in the dark places, etc., etc.

I think it's true for many individuals and I know a lot of them and I applaud them and so on.

[laughs]

Well, this is why Janet Malcolm had a point.

Uh, there is, there is something-

Never trust a journalist.

sit down with you for a profile where you're asking someone to give you a lot of trust and be vulnerable with you and then they don't know what you're gonna come out with and I didn't know what I was gonna come out with so

it's a hard sell it's funny because I was just rereading the beginning of Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and The Murderer and I was thinking about how she She has that famous meditation on any journalist knows that what they're doing is an act of great betrayal.

And then she, of course, says, I thought in trying to interview another journalist, we would be able to speak to each other as colleagues.

But in fact, even the person who knows better still gets trapped or still gets seduced by the idea of having someone who will listen to them speak about themselves and And so something that I've been wondering just for myself is like, I could have always said no.

If the personality were truly the engine, Next should be the masterpiece.

Janet Malcolm argued in her book about a murder trial and the writer who covered it that the relationship between a journalist and a subject is a confidence trick with a delayed detonation.

The subject talks because he feels understood.

The writer listens because he intends to use it.

So, not only is this a double biography and a memoir, it's also a book of Australian art history and social history and it gives us a deep insight, an intimate insight into the inspirations for the paintings of Helen and John.

And as you've heard, it starts with this wonderful epigraph, a quote by Janet Malcolm, art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.

And as soon as I saw that, I just thought I'm going to relish this book because, you know, that's an invitation to disobedience.

And I think a good artist has to be disobedient.

mottos that I had underlying the book.

Yeah, they're both fabulous mottos.

And of course, the Janet Malcolm that we had at the beginning.

What would you say, I mean, there are so many secrets that you reveal in this and one that we haven't really talked about in detail and that is that, you know, that your father was an alcoholic.

It works through Ghana's career book by book and you get a lot of the background of Ghana who was involved in the books and it's a really great biography.

It's not a straight biography but you get a lot of biographical material in it and it's fascinating on this exact point of managing relationships and of course the classic The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm is such an authoritative piece of work on this area and just bears rereading once a year.

When I write my first novel, I'll be sure to describe the lead character as having long, blonde, straight hair so that no one could possibly mistake it as you.

She hosted a podcast with her close friend.